I left the Jehovah’s Witnesses and made up my own rules for life – as a BDSM model
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“Are you the people who don’t have blood transfusions?” was the first thing most people asked if any of us mentioned our religion. We weren’t supposed to say “yes”, because we weren’t meant to allow our faith to be defined by what we didn’t do. We were supposed to emphasise the positives, such as the promise of eternal life on Earth.
But the inconvenient fact was that we weren’t allowed blood transfusions. Furthermore, we were known for not celebrating Christmas, Easter or birthdays, for not being allowed into school assemblies, and for knocking on people’s doors to evangelise to them at weekends.
These characteristics were easily spotted by outside observers. From inside, we knew that was only the beginning of the rules. Dressing modestly was important. I learned that masturbation was wrong many years before I found out what it actually was. Men were the heads of our households, and women weren’t allowed to pray out loud, address the congregation, or even handle the microphones we used at our meetings.
At nine years old, I knew that oral sex, gay sex and extramarital sex were all just as sinful as blood transfusions. My future stretched ahead of me, into eternity, hemmed in on all sides by rules. I dreaded an eternity of worshipping a God who’d never tire of being praised, but I didn’t know how to escape on my own.
Eternity was snatched away from me when I was 13, when my family left the Jehovah’s Witnesses (JWs) and my new world spun with giddy freedoms. Skateboarding on Sunday mornings, my first pair of jeans, trying out swearing like my school friends. But with the freedom came uncertainty. If the JWs had been wrong, how could I trust anyone to tell me how to live? I sensed I should make my own mind up, but I’d had no practice; JWs weren’t offered any autonomy in decision-making.
Content retrieved from: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/21/why-i-quit-jehovahs-witnesses-bdsm-model.
